The field of the invention is lighting devices, and the invention relates more particularly to safety and locating lamps.
Flashing lights are widely used to control vehicular traffic. Highway flashers are typically provided with large storage batteries and a bulb which is intermittently energized. Such devices are not typically appropriate to be hand held because of the weight of the storage battery and the configuration of the lighting assembly.
Xenon bulbs are widely used to provide intense, extremely short flashes of light for uses as high speed photography. They are also used to provide very bright light beams for photography or for search lights. These uses require a large amount of power. When a charge of electricity is passed through xenon gas at low pressure, it emits a flash of bluish white light and at higher pressures, a white light resembling daylight is emitted which is particularly useful for photography.
For applications such as rescue, it would be highly desirable to provide the person being searched for with a light source that could be seen for many miles. For uses such as backpacking or for military maneuvers, it would not be practical to carry the standard storage battery-powered type of flasher. However, if someone were lost in the mountains or at sea, the ability to provide periodic flashes of a bulb such as a xenon bulb could make the difference between success and failure of a rescue operation.
For traffic guidance, it is beneficial to alternatively provide a red light, a green light or an amber light depending upon the desired flow of traffic. While the common approach is a pair of bulbs, each behind a different colored lens, such fixtures are inherently not sufficiently compact to be held easily by hand.